Notes on Exploration and Process: Sur at La MaMa and The Shed Open Call Week 2

I’ve been thinking about exploration and process. Coming off the run of Sur at La MaMa and diving head first into my residency at the Shed I experienced a sort of creative whiplash. The adrenaline from the show reached its fever pitch and then the residency hit a reset. To travel back from Antarctica to my stationary bike took some effort but soon I was able to get the gears turning both literally and metaphorically.

In the development of Sur we spent so much time just being together. Sharing food, stories, time and care. We spent hours brainstorming and thinking deeply about who these women were and who they could be as more fully realized characters. For me coming from a dance background it sometimes created a mild anxiety. When will we start “doing”.  A craving for rigor and physicality that I now realize at times was an inability to sit still and contemplate an idea and for that to be enough. In the end, Sur came together. A world truly born from deep listening and feminist care practices.

In one of the most memorable quotes from Ursula Le Guin’s short story Sur she writes that the women’s “desire was as pure as the winter snow, to go, to see, no more, no less”. I recognize that so far in my residency and in the development of Dirty Laundry this type of exploration devoid of the pressures of the creation of a marketable artistic “product” has allowed me to actually be present in my work for the first time. 

In a field that demands the constant churning of new work for artists to feel and be perceived as “relevant” I am interested in process as a pushback against the very issue I am hoping to address: over work and burn out. It’s dawned on me that the most important aspect of my process at the moment is to not be burned out by it.

What does it mean to stand in Antarctica and leave no trace? To explore without the need to stake down a flag? Right now creating work feels like looking out on to a vast expanse of whiteness and deciding to keep walking forward anyway. ONWARD

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Apr 10, 2025

Had such a great rehearsal today. It feels like my vocabulary is starting to come together and everything feels clearer with the material I have.

Today we ran all of the material we had made so far and it was exciting to see it all come together. Many tweaks need to be made. Specially in concern to sound but I’m excited for what Kelly will create. 

This week is going so fast. Being here every day chipping away at things feels so gratifying. Art is a slow process and I see the ways it bumps up against our capitalist world. Today I’m trying to focus on just moving through the uncomfortable and sticky moments. I have been good about that so far this week.

https://vimeo.com/1081181099

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"So how's the residency going?"

I keep getting this question and to be honest sometimes I'm not quite sure how to answer. Mostly I just say it's going well because I'm not sure if people are really interested in the million things that I feel I discover every time I arrive in the room and set up the bike. My time at the Shed is fully focused on process. As one of my dancers said in rehearsal "Kat it's a residency we need to RESIDE." A call to mindfulness.

I keep thinking about the heart of the work. My favorite pieces are those that seem to reach out toward the audience in a way that feels human and genuine. Even if we understand the dancers are performing, every gesture is artifice and the story may not even be exactly what happened that's not really the point. We feel the heart of it. I'm finding slowly that at the heart of this piece there are things beyond the anger and frustration that fueled its first iteration.

There's grief and there's also a reframing of it's main theme: Burn out.

In the work, I am currently investigating not only how burn out affects the body but also how we perceive burn out in general. Most of the time we think about burn out as something to get through or conquer. And while I am definitely tackling my burn out every day and hope to one day be truly healed, I now recognize that maybe the way I think about the burn out itself may be wrong.

https://vimeo.com/1081178974

Could burn out be an invitation, an opening instead of an anchor?

I'm thinking about how burn out can be anthropomorphized. Or maybe how we can tell our stories in a more abstracted way while still staying true to the message. How we can embody each-other's pains and triumphs in movement. At this moment I not only want to shine a light on the things that are broken with American work culture. I want to open a space for questioning and maybe plotting and scheming something better. Walking towards "Utopía."

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Dirty Laundry (Excerpt)

by Katherine Paola De La Cruz

June 2, 2025 (NEW DATE!)

On June 2, we will perform in a shared bill for Movement Research at the Judson Church presenting an excerpt from Dirty Laundry which is in ongoing development at The Shed and will premiere in the Summer of 2026.

Dirty Laundry explores themes of burn out, toxic work culture and the absurdity of being a 20-something submitting job applications and writing cover letters at the end of the world. Through interviews, sound scores and dance theater, the work poses the following questions:

• What does labor look like for young performing artists?

• How does burn-out manifest in our bodies?

• What's use for “utopian” imaginings in the midst of chaos?

Learn More

[Image Descriptions and Photo Credits:

1. A photo of performer's silhouettes in front of hanging fabrics all bathe din red and pink light. Photo by Katherine Paola De La Cruz

2. Four images. Two from the play while the women are in camp: Gathered in camp for a song, The discovery of Teresa's pregnancy. Photos by Browen Sharp. Two images in black and white from rehearsals. Photos by Sabine Stock

3. A collage with four images from Sur in different scenes of the play. Moving through the icy landscape, celebrating and moving in the white expanse, laboring to give birth as a group activity in a game of tug of war with a rope, admiring Rosa del Sur. Photos by Browen Sharp.

4. Two images side by side. First: A photo of Katherine portraying Teresa at the beginning of the journey wearing a yellow turban, a fabulously decorated jacket with flower applique and a yellow skirt looking off into the distance. Photo by Browen Sharp. Second. A portrait of Katherine portraying Teresa wearing her snow gear. She wears goggles over her eyes and many layers. Photo by Katherine Paola De La Cruz

5. Two images of a large parachute billowing and moving as if alive and bathed in warm amber light. Photos by Browen Sharp.

6. A photo of Nia Sadler and Esther Nozea in Motion. Esther supports her body kneeling on one knee and touching the ground with her hand ad her other elbow rises upwards. Nia stands balancing on one leg in an attitude position. Photo by Sabine Stock.

7. A set of three images/gif. Katherine in motion, Nia and Esther performing a section of a phrase, Nia and Esther in motion. Photo by Sabine Stock.

8. Video link of phrase work. Nia and Esther performing choreography.

9. A photo of Katherine on the ground with arm extended and face radiant smiling and joyous. Photo by Sabine Stock.

10. A photo of Katherine, Nia and Esther. Esther and Nia run at either side of Katherine while Katherine sits at the stationary bike. Photo by Sabine Stock.

11. A video link of Nia and Esther performing a phrase. Esther dances on the bike while Nia moves in the studio. Photo by Sabine Stock.

12. A photo of Nia, Esther and Katherine. Katherine shows off her muscles, Esther laughs and Nia looks downwards. Photo by Sabine Stock.

13. A photo of Katherine spinning. She wears a skirt made up of neck ties which fly out in every direction. She is bathed in red light. Costume design by Valentina Bache Rodriguez. Photo captured during the development of Dirty Laundry for the Little by Little Brooklyn Artist Residency housed at the Brooklyn Peace Center. March 2024. Photo by Ignacio Leiva.